Anna Palosz lights a candle on the grave of her son Bart, at the cemetery in Kalna, Poland, Friday, Nov. 22, 2013.

Anna Palosz lights a candle on the grave of her son Bart, at the cemetery in Kalna, Poland, Friday, Nov. 22, 2013.

Photo: Alik Keplicz, Alik Keplicz/For The Greenwich T

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Bart Palosz during his last visit to Poland in 2012.

Bart Palosz during his last visit to Poland in 2012.

Photo: File Photo

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The Palosz family, parents Franciszek and Anna with their children Beata and Bart Palosz. The photo was taken in August 2013 when the family brought Beata Palosz to Elizabethtown College in Pa., where she is a freshman studying for a double major in international business and finance. less

The Palosz family, parents Franciszek and Anna with their children Beata and Bart Palosz. The photo was taken in August 2013 when the family brought Beata Palosz to Elizabethtown College in Pa., where she is a ... more

Photo: Contributed Photo

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Bart shares a quiet moment with his sister Beata in her freshman dorm room at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania in August 2013. Bart went with his parents to drop Beata off at college six days before he killed himself in July. less

Bart shares a quiet moment with his sister Beata in her freshman dorm room at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania in August 2013. Bart went with his parents to drop Beata off at college six days before he ... more

Franciszek Palosz during the Vigil Prayer Service for his son, Bart Palosz, at Greenwich High School, Tuesday night, Sept. 10, 2013. Palosz committed suicide after attending the first day of classes as a sophomore at Greenwich High school. The Palosz family says the suicide is the result of school bullying over a period of years. less

Franciszek Palosz during the Vigil Prayer Service for his son, Bart Palosz, at Greenwich High School, Tuesday night, Sept. 10, 2013. Palosz committed suicide after attending the first day of classes as a ... more

Bartlomiej "Bart" Palosz as seen in his Greenwich High School freshman yearbook photo. Palosz committed suicide after attending the first day of school as a sophomore. The family says the suicide is the result of school bullying over a period of years. less

Bartlomiej "Bart" Palosz as seen in his Greenwich High School freshman yearbook photo. Palosz committed suicide after attending the first day of school as a sophomore. The family says the suicide is the result ... more

KALNA, Poland -- It's a cloudless second day in May when Bartlomiej Palosz is born in the green foothills of the Beskid Mountains. A round-faced baby boy with porcelain skin, he inherits his mother Anna's deep-set blue eyes and the shy demeanor of his father Franciszek.

His name is Polish for Bartholomew, one of Jesus' 12 apostles -- but everyone in this village without strangers calls him Bart.

Bart and his older sister Beata are the fourth generation in their maternal bloodline to grow up on this rural hamlet's only road in the beige stucco house with crocheted window curtains. The siblings eat slices of Bart's favorite homemade cheesecake surrounded by the same coal-burning stove and wall-hung crucifixes of their mother's childhood.

In winter when the air bites, the siblings hunker indoors for Polish history lessons with their mother. They learn that nearby Bielsko-Biala, which has the only cinema for miles and where Bart begs to go on weekends for scoops of plain vanilla ice cream, was annexed during World War II by the Third Reich, and its Jewish population shipped to Auschwitz.

Like Bart, life here is simple and calm. But there are undertones of sadness and deep scars left by the region's past persecutors. Foreign architecture, war memorials made of barbed wire, and the people's fiery Polish pride.

Gradually, Bart begins to notice these dark spots in the landscape and within himself. He has none of his mother's spunk and confidence. He is more like his father, a quiet outdoorsman who spends weekends cocooned in the woods and does not smile for photographs.

Even the mountains Bart loves begin to radiate a sense of unease the way they ring around his home like a jaw of sharpened teeth.

When Bart is 4, a stunning twist of fate -- rare to the point of bizarre -- uproots the Palosz family from their rural homestead and catapults them to a distant planet, a place as wealthy, cosmopolitan and sophisticated as Kalna is not.

A lottery set up by the U.S. government grants permanent residency to 50,000 winning applicants from countries with low U.S. immigration rates, including Poland. With Anna out of work and Franciszek struggling to get by on a welder's salary, the family joins a pool of 10 million American hopefuls. Their chances of winning this Powerball for would-be immigrants are less than 2 percent.

Neither she nor Franciszek speaks English. They have saved almost no money for airplane tickets. But with the dream of steady work and a college education for the children, they borrow $500 in cash and, with Beata and Bart in tow, board a plane to John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Anna quickly finds work caring for children belonging to the moneyed elite of Greenwich. But the Palosz family is geographically and psychologically dislocated. Everyone struggles. Bart and Beata enroll in a public school with as many students as there are people in Kalna. Franciszek shortens his name to Frank and starts his own carpentry business, often working 12-hour days.

In this foreign world, the family grasps at threads of familiarity, most of which exist outside the gilded borders of their new hometown. In Stamford, they find a church where Mass is celebrated in Polish. They make trips to Greenpoint, a neighborhood in Brooklyn known as "Little Poland," where pierogies and cabbage soup are staples on menus they all can read. Frank joins a Polish hunting club and spends weekends fishing and shooting deer in the Catskill Mountains. Sometimes he packs tents and brings along Anna and the kids.

On Saturdays, Bart and Beata attend Polish language school so they can keep up with their relatives. Anna enrolls in evening English classes at Norwalk Community College to keep up with the kids. Frank learns just enough English to discuss flooring and cabinets with clients. At home, the family speaks only Polish.

In Greenwich, Beata begins to thrive. She makes good grades, joins the cheerleading squad and grows a head of gorgeous, long blonde hair. New friendships come easily with her confidence and chirpy persona. Her closest classmates become fixtures on the family's living room couch.

For Bart, it is a different story. Assimilation seems almost impossible. He is a large, lumbering boy, a head taller than most of his classmates. He can't shake his Polish accent. His best attempts at friend-making involve barging in on other kids' conversations, a method that more often makes him the butt of a joke. Alone in his bedroom, he masters the Battlefield video game series and teaches himself to deal with computer viruses. But mostly he longs to return to Poland, where the quiet countryside gives him peace.

There is one bright spot in this turbulent period of Bart's new life. Finally, on the playground of New Lebanon Elementary School, Bart finds a pal.

He and Izzy Johnson make a quirky, clumsy, wildly unconventional pair. They don't have much in common. Bart is a sensitive, well-mannered fifth-grader. Izzy, in the third grade, is brazen and holds his own. But they both feel like misfits, a trait that bonds them over afternoons of video games, fishing trips and Airsoft battles, firing plastic pellets at one another from guns that look frighteningly real. Instead of a ball, they use the Palosz family's pet ferret in gentle games of catch.

They are famous for breaking new toys within hours through disassembly and experimentation. When they don't have a robot in their hands, they fall back to dreaming up alternative rules for the universe.

A topic of repeated debate between Bart (a practicing Catholic who wears a crucifix) and Izzy (a self-proclaimed atheist) is, "If God exists, why is there war?" These debates typically escalate into arguments that end when Bart has had enough and stomps home.

It turns out there's another thing these boys have in common outside their eccentricities. Each becomes a target of bullying at school.

In silence, Bart endures verbal attacks from peers who pick on him for his uncommonly tall stature. His Polish accent. His extra weight. The pimples on his face. When they have almost run out of names and insults, his eyes brim with tears, inviting a new round of taunts.

Bart says nothing to his classmates when they shove him into the thorn bushes every morning on his walk to Western Middle School. Not a word when they call him "gay" because he won't fight back.

But Bart does tell his family. Anna meets with school administrators. She confronts a boy who's made a game of pushing Bart down into the thorns. She tells Bart it's OK to push back. But Bart is too timid to stand up for himself. Anna starts driving her son to school so he won't arrive with scratches on his arms.

Izzy also finds trouble fitting in. His outside-the-box personality makes him the plaything of four bullies in his fourth-grade class. Then one day Izzy calls one of the boys fat. Instantly, the bullying ceases.

Bart could squash the squirts who terrorize him with no more effort than it takes to snap his fingers. But there isn't a drop of aggression in him.

Boy Scout outings also provide Bart a sense of connection. He feels at home in the wilderness, so fishing, hiking and camping with boys his own age feels more or less comfortable -- though not always.

One of Bart's first excursions with Troop 9 is a camping trip at Seton Reservation, in western Greenwich. Feeling like one of the boys after a long hike in the rain, Bart joins in as the scouts one by one peel off their saturated shirts and fly them high above their heads.

But the scouts turn on Bart, teasing him when he reveals his round belly. Standing shirtless in the rain with a half dozen sets of judgmental eyes fixed on his stomach, Bart retreats to his tent. He spends the rest of the evening alone while the other boys banter around the glow of a campfire. Anna helps chaperone future camping trips because Frank is often working and Bart feels better with a parent there.

One other source of happiness in Bart's life never fails him -- his visits home to Poland. Mountain hikes and bike rides with cousins always await him. No one there belittles him for the way he talks, even though he has developed an American accent when he speaks Polish.

The love and acceptance he feels in Kalna magnifies the summer after he turns 13. He meets his first girlfriend. She's pretty and Bart is smitten.

The girl buys Bart a piggy bank, telling him to save up so he can make more frequent visits. Bart gives her a web camera that Beata helps him pick out. Now they can Skype when summer ends and Bart must return to Greenwich.

Before his flight home, Bart stands alone in a grassy field, hands on hips, and poses for a photograph. He's not smiling, but he looks at ease. His face is shadowed by a baseball cap.

Behind him is a brown cow. Behind the cow is more grass leading to a hill covered with leafy trees.

It is the picture of a boy at home in nature.

Later, on his computer, Bart adds a big, bold caption: "This is what success looks like."

For his 14th Christmas, Bart asks for two things: new clothes and a bed set patterned with soccer balls, basketballs and footballs. Bart has no interest in sports, and the seemingly odd request does not signal a sudden enthusiasm. It's a yearning for the one gift he wants more than anything -- to fit in with other kids his age.

Psychologically, Bart is flailing. Now a freshman at Greenwich High School, he's grasping at social connections, but receding into the alternative worlds where he passes long chunks of his days with the aid of the Internet and his video game console.

As he retreats, part of Bart continues to yearn for acceptance from the people around him. On one of his social media accounts, he writes, "If this comment gets more than 10 (likes), I will tell a secret that I never would tell anybody not even my closest friends or my family I just gotta get it off my chest."

The comment gets one "like." The secret goes unshared. The long drift of his mind accelerates.

Kids continue to find new ways to tease Bart. A group of boys pesters him about having a "fake" Polish girlfriend, so he writes her an email and breaks it off. But soon there's a new girl at school from China who captures his heart. Bart carries a picture of her in his wallet. In his pocket, he keeps the white handkerchief embroidered with a heart that she gave him. They exchange text messages and talk when they see each other in the halls at school.

Then the girl moves back to China, leaving Bart feeling alone once again.

Bart meets regularly with his guidance counselor and school psychologist. But he doesn't say much outside of head nods and monosyllabic answers. He insists everything is "fine," never letting on to the depths of his feelings of isolation.

Anna, desperate to make her son feel better at the end of each torturous school week, organizes hikes and fishing expeditions and camping trips for Bart. Frank teaches him to load, shoot and clean a rifle, hoping to spark a shared father-son interest in hunting. Unbeknownst to them, they're only making things worse.

"I'll have nothing to do when my parents force me to go to a remote forest in upstate NY," Bart writes on his computer.

The woods he once loved have become nothing more than an Internet dead zone.

Beata, now a senior, is her brother's fierce protector. She sits with him in the high school cafeteria. She hunts down a boy in Bart's biology class who purposely smashes her brother's brand new Android cellphone. "Do you think it's OK to do that? Do you really think that's OK?" She reports Bart's social struggles to the student support staff. She invites him out to the movies with her friends.

Bart loves his sister. But he also starts to resent her. Tiny beads of ill-will bubble inside him when he sees the ease with which she walks down the halls of their high school, a friend, a boyfriend, an admirer always at her side. She is his closest ally, and yet she cannot help because she is everything he is not -- bubbly, popular, happy. And it makes him feel that much more alone.

Bart's friendship with Izzy fades as the boys' interests split, so Beata tries to forge new friendships on her brother's behalf. She recruits the GHS football player she's dating to help talk Bart into trying out for the team. After all, Bart could fill a doorway with his bulky build. But Bart refuses. It would only give kids another opportunity to make fun of him, he says.

Beata monitors her brother's text messages to make sure he isn't being harassed. But that stops one day when Bart decides to lock his cellphone with a password.

When her brother's distracted, she secretly skims his email inbox and checks the browser history on his laptop. Mostly, he talks about video games with people he meets online. He seems to have lots of virtual friends, at least.

One of these virtual friends is a boy Bart's age from a small town 300 miles away, just outside Rochester, N.Y. They meet online playing the fantasy role-playing game RuneScape. The game is set in a medieval realm where vampires, trolls and armored knights collect ingredients for magic potions and duel on the bows of pirate ships.

What begins as a brief email exchange about the game swiftly develops into one of the most significant relationships Bart has ever had outside his family. In emails and postmarked letters, the boys discuss everything -- homework, music, current events, their goals for the future and their families. They call themselves long lost brothers.

Bart confides that he is bullied so badly that he sometimes thinks about killing the kids at school who bother him. He says he feels worthless.

The boy suggests Bart take out his anger on the shooting targets in his video games and on hunting trips with his dad, or punch a pillow instead. He listens without ever passing judgment on Bart.

Bart tells no one about this confidante whom he never meets. He tells no one else his darkest thoughts -- not his parents, not even his sister.

On June 3, 2013, Bart opens his laptop and logs on to Google+, where his profile picture shows him with an American flag hoisted over one shoulder and the Polish flag drawn in paint on either cheek. Bart's personal page on the social network is public, but no one who knows him in reality knows about it.

"Hey," he types, "if I were to stab my eye out due to school caused insanity, who would miss me?"

With his cellphone camera, Bart snaps a selfie while holding the tip of a knife to his pupil. He posts the photo alongside his question.

The cry for help garners zero comments.

On June 7, Bart posts a goodbye note.

"I have chosen to go with 3 peoples advice and kill myself," he types, adding that he has just swallowed pills. "I just wish it was faster."

This time, Bart's warning shot gets attention.

When other Google+ users assure him his troubles will pass, he replies that he has been bullied at school every day for the last 10 years.

Now Bart's bloodstream is surging with pharmaceuticals. He can't stand up straight and feels zoned out.

"I'm still alive," he reports on June 8, "never trust my mind."

Summer vacation brings long, hot days without structure and Bart responds by receding deeper into his own psyche, where the dividing line between his reveries and realities is blurred and increasingly distorted. Bart's family has no idea how dark his world is becoming.

He loses 10 pounds from June to August walking for an hour, three times a day, alone, with his iPod earbuds sunk in his head. One of his favorite routes brings him over the Byram River into Port Chester, N.Y., home of his favorite place on earth: a GameStop store. Bart loves to loiter there, surrounded by shelves of alternative worlds and boxed fantasies.

Bart spends sunny afternoons indoors with his laptop, drawn to the strange characters he finds on the Internet. He watches propaganda videos for Anonymous, the collective of hackers and activists credited with carrying out cyber-attacks against the FBI, the CIA and the Vatican, and pledges to join its ranks. He devours anime clips depicting intergalactic travel, mass suicide and accidental death. He becomes enraptured by a haunting song by Hatsune Miku, a Japanese pop star avatar with turquoise pigtails. It accompanies a video about a teenage girl who dies after being struck by a speeding truck. Bart chooses it as the song he wants played at his burial.

On his computer, he writes:

"I would love for a country to invade America, most people would just stay home and die unlike Poland which everybody fought and died for their country and I'm proud to be Polish."

"I think the cops are on my ass about something. I've tracked a dos signal to the white house. One way or another I will find the truth."

"I am now hiding in a closet. #closet"

"I notice if I sound sad I'm normal and if I act happy, cheerful, and 'normal' there is a high chance that I will try to poison myself, cut myself, commit suicide, or jump in front of a truck :)"

Bart argues constantly with his mother. He refuses to complete household chores such as vacuuming and taking out the trash. He refuses to get off the Internet.

Anna repeatedly tells him: "You have to get good grades."

"No, I don't. Bill Gates didn't get good grades."

Insubordination is a new behavior for Bart. His family thinks it's a stage and blames it on his age.

Bart forgoes his annual trip to his beloved Poland, figuring it might be easier to retain friendships over the summer if he stays put in Greenwich. Anna brings Bart to the beach with his Polish friend, Radek, who lives 30 miles away in Fairfield. Beata takes him out for frozen yogurt. Dad takes him fishing.

But the family's focus is on readying Beata for college. She is the first family member from any generation to seek out a college degree. There is a buzz of excitement and a half-dozen dorm room shopping trips to Bed Bath & Beyond.

Bart also plans to go to college. He wants to study computer programming at New York University. After that, he plans to return to Poland. His family's house in Kalna will be passed down to him and his sister some day and Beata doesn't want it. Beata sees herself landing a job in marketing, marrying her high school sweetheart and raising a family in the United States. She can't imagine packing up her big, American life and fitting it in a tiny Polish village.

The promise of a $225 stipend gets Bart outdoors collecting storm debris and planting trees for two weeks with other 15-year-old boys as part of the Greenwich Youth Conservation Project. After lunch, there are field trips and guest speakers. A representative from Kids in Crisis talks to the teens about local youth counseling services, which Bart never considers tapping.

Bart spends his earnings from the program on a noise-canceling headphone set. He also buys a poster of Hatsune Miku and tapes it on his bedroom wall.

On his YouTube account, he writes that he would do anything to attend a Hatsune Miku concert, "Even jump off a building."

He also posts a running commentary of his thoughts:

"Where I live most teachers don't care, I remember last year I had a great teacher who made class fun, he would make bets with us like if we all did our homework the rest of the week there would be no home work, or once he bet the class that if %90 or more of the class got a 90 or higher on a test he would lick his shoes and throw them out a window, the next day the test was given out and one person got less than a 90. Now I cram all night into books and still barely pass."

"I have been bullied till point of suicide, you need to just get over it and find one thing to help you survive. For me my Chinese friend, for you no clue."

"to be exact after the columbine shooting, they found that one of them made maps for doom and it was said he made a map to practice killing people with the outline of the school."

"I don't smoke, I have a life and a loving family"

"Hey you should be happy I'm a freshman and if the rest is this bad then I'm screwed."

"I always wonder who pays for repairs if someone jumps and falls on your car?"

Bart sends frequent email to his confidante, saying a couple of kids from school are threatening to kill him. He says they steal all sorts of belongings from him. He says they hold him still and cut him with a knife.

Together, Bart and his confidante conclude these bullies are unfortunate saps. They are Grinch-like humans who behave the way they do because no one loves them, and no one ever will.

For the first time, Bart feels heard, accepted and completely understood.

Before Beata leaves for college, Bart sends her a text message revealing a big secret.

"I'm gay."

"Mom and dad will never accept that."

"I can't change who I am."

On Aug. 27, the sun rises on the first day of Bart's sophomore year. Bart begs Anna to let him stay home from school. Reluctantly, he dresses in red gym shorts and a white T-shirt with a stripe down the sleeves. Outside, a warm rain begins to fall.

Bart eats a breakfast of milk and Nutella spread over a slice of white bread, then buckles into the passenger seat of his mother's Toyota Solera. Anna drops him off at the main entrance of Greenwich High School.

Feelings of anxiety and dread explode in Bart's head as he stands alone in a mob of laughing faces with backpacks.

On the afternoon bus ride home, Bart sends Anna a text message listing the school supplies he needs. Three notebooks. Three binders. Pens and pencils. He also complains of a stomachache. He says he feels like he's going to throw up.

Anna tells her son to let out Teddy, the family's fluffy Papillon dog, and then take a nap. She'll check on him when she gets home from her work day spent at the Stamford Nature Center with the little girl she baby-sits.

Bart lets out the dog and retreats to his second-floor bedroom, which is technically the family's guest room. Bart sleeps in his real bedroom on the third floor only when his grandmother visits from Poland. Otherwise, he prefers to avoid the extra set of stairs.

In the guest room, there's a potted palm tree on the floor. On the walls are the Polish flag, the certificate Bart received when he was confirmed and a picture of the Virgin Mary that his grandmother asked him to hang.

Opposite the twin bed is a gun safe. Inside the locked safe are the five rifles Bart's father uses for hunting.

Bart begins typing an email to his confidante.

"Goodbye brother I will always appreciate everything you have done for me and always being there for me and being the best friend anyone could ever have hopefully our pathes will cross again when the time comes for you to enter the next world.

"By the way I have burned all the letters you have sent to me and deleted all the emails you have sent to me and I have sent to you for the sake of no one finding out about our friendship

"Love and rememberance, Bart Palosz"

Bart walks into the kitchen and reaches for the tin cup on the shelf above the oven. He removes a small key.

He returns to his bedroom and opens the gun locker with the key no one knows he's found. He takes out a Smith & Wesson semi-automatic shotgun and loads it.

On the other side of the wall, Bart's cellphone rings in the living room with a call from his mother. She's on her way to Staples to pick up Bart's school supplies.

The call goes unanswered.

About 6 p.m., Beata's cellphone rings in her dorm room overlooking the Elizabethtown College campus.

It's her neighbor back in Greenwich.

"Why are the police storming your house with AK-47s?" the high school student blurts.

Beata dials her parents, but the police, treating the house like a crime scene, answer and will not let her speak to them.

Another call from the neighbor: "Your dad's leaning against your car, crying, and your mom's hysterical in front of the house, and --" Pause. "And she just yelled, 'Bart shot himself!'"

Beata's body starts shaking. Did he miss? Is he hurt? Is he alive?

When she arrives home, the house smells of cleaning agents. Her goldfish, plopped in a puddle of water in a frying pan, have died. Her family is broken.

Four days later, Beata eulogizes her brother at a Mass celebrated in English and Polish.

The boy who felt so alone has 400 people packed inside the Holy Name of Jesus Roman Catholic Church in Stamford for his funeral. Among the mourners are members of Bart's Boy Scout troop. The Greenwich High School football team is standing in back, clad in red jerseys. Superintendent of Schools William McKersie is there, as is Greenwich Police Chief James Heavey, who wears his Boy Scout uniform in a show of solidarity.

What Beata asks them all to remember is the way Bart was when he was happy.

"He never judged anyone."

The cemetery lies at Kalna's edge, nestled against a forest of leafless birches near where Bart's life began. Notes from Bart's family are tucked in the pockets of his new school clothes, the ones he wears in his coffin.

The Palosz family, now an unsteady three, wonders how they could have saved him. How could they have known his internal suffering was so great? When the shock and sadness subsides a bit, a surge of guilt takes hold of them.

Beata blames herself for going off to college when her little brother most needed her. Frank gives up hunting. Anna is so overcome with grief she decides to stay awhile in Poland after the rest of them return to America, back to their jobs and their schooling. Anna loses her job as a babysitter. She feels she has failed her job as Bart's mother.

Three times a day, Anna visits the son beneath her feet. She brings him flowers and she prays.

"I think if God wants to give you something, you will have it. If he takes it away, there is a reason he doesn't want you to have it," she says.

"That's what I believe. And that's what Bart believed."

Anna organizes the colored lanterns at the foot of the grave. She has just been released from the psychiatric ward of a local hospital where she spent 16 days dealing with her grief. With slow, steady hands, she relights the flames that died out while she was away and removes the wilted flowers.

The air is damp and cold. There's a thick fog floating in over the headstones. A light wind lifts Anna's blonde flyaways as she works on hands and knees.

Anna rises to her feet and buries her chin in the neckline of her sweatshirt. She prays for several minutes. She makes the sign of the cross, lifts her head and locks eyes with her son.

He is forever young, wearing a red robe and crimson necktie on the day he was confirmed. His lips are pursed. His thick, chestnut hair is neat. His stare is piercing.

"Beloved Bart," reads the lettering in Polish below the portrait on the headstone, "parting is our fate, meeting is our hope."